Backfill and build
Until such time as we can afford a family spaceship, others will have to provide vacation snapshots. A special shout-out to Dr. Hadfield, who plays a mean guitar and finds time to point the camera out the windows while doing other important things.
More country than we can usually see in a weekender.
I’ve following a local story involving caves and collapsing buildings and other good news fodder. A couple of weeks ago, two apartment blocks about three kilometres from here were condemned, due to shifting soils. That happens (I guess). The press played pedagogue and laid the blame on some underground caves (limestone is indigenous to the region, and tends to dissolve in the waters). Then last afternoon, two more blocks got the danger tape and the residents were allowed a full thirty minutes of treasure hunt in their apartments before heading for firmer ground. Bad, bad caves.
This morning, a different (and far more interesting) explanation. There are fully twenty apartment buildings, closely grouped on a piece of land that used to be a limestone quarry. Someone with an entrepreneurial view of things filled in the hole, back in the ’50’s. And then, given that the hole was gone, back-filled with sand and machinery and bones (??) and plastics and other available junk, the apartment blocks were constructed. Hole –> junk –> no hole –> housing.
Move forward to the present era. According to a geomorphologist, waters transiting from one underground cave to another underground cave took the path of least resistance through the former quarry. Anyone who has done beach engineering knows that moving waters make a mess. And the holes appearing around and under the four apartment blocks are as natural as anything else Nature does. Man helped a bit; that’s all.
Rock solid; sand not.
